Punctuation is a bit like diets – fashions abound and the government has its say, but experts are rarely listened to. Recently, in the absence of any more urgent problems to solve in the British education system, the distressing issue of primary school children abusing exclamation marks was finally addressed. The new guidelines say that pupils in Key Stages 1 and 2 (grades 1 to 6) should get credit only if they use exclamation marks in full sentences beginning with ‘What’ or ‘How’.

New regulations in Canada mean that international students could obtain citizenship more easily after completing their degrees. Bill C-6 shortens the time required to apply for citizenship from four to three years and restores a provision that allows 50 per cent of the time spent at university to count towards that requirement.

The press secretary of Kurdish insurgent group the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan), based somewhere in northern Iraq, is a former high school English language teacher with an MA Tefl.

Since the ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK ended in July, guerrilla warfare and reprisals in the form of aerial bombardments by Turkey’s armed forces have resumed in the predominantly ethnic Kurdish region of south-eastern Turkey, while the PKK have been assisting the peshmerga forces of Iraqi Kurdistan fighting the Islamic State. The PKK is officially viewed as a terrorist organisation in Turkey and the UK. International journalists who want access to the PKK all have to go through Zagros Hiwa (shown above at a secret location) to set up meetings with PKK commanders.

Thousands of international students deported from the UK could now seek readmission and receive compensation as a result of a ‘damning’ verdict by an immigration appeals tribunal. The tribunal ruled against the UK Home Office over its decision to deport students who had taken the Toeic test of English. The ruling in March by Mr Justice McCloskey in the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) dealt with an appeal in which Qadir Ishan, an accountancy student from Pakistan, was told by the Home Office he’d secured his visa ‘by deception’ and would be deported.